242 Life and Immortality. 



Our common Wild Turkey, once so plentiful in Pennsyl- 

 vania, is now restricted to the more eastern and southern por- 

 tions of the United States, while in the parts of Texas, New 

 Mexico, Colorado and Arizona adjacent to the southern 

 Rocky Mountains, and thence stretching southward along 

 the eastern slope of Mexico as far as Orizaba, there exists 

 another form, essentially different, which, by way of distinc- 

 tion, has been popularly called the Mexican Turkey. It is 

 from this species, and not from the other, as has been erro- 

 neously supposed and taught, that the domestic fowl has 

 been derived. Even in this enlightened age, with so many 

 ornithological teachers on every hand, we see this mistake 

 propagated by such as know better, and whose business it is, 

 or ought to be, to have a care that truth shall prevail. 



Between the wild bird of Eastern North America and the 

 Mexican and typical barnyard fowls there are differences 

 which must be apparent even to the most superficial ob- 

 server. The extremities of the tail-feathers, as well as the 

 feathers overlying the base of the tail, are in the latter 

 creamy or fulvous white, while in the former they are of a 

 decided chestnut-brown Color. Other characteristics exist, 

 but these only become evident to the keen-sighted ornithol- 

 ogist. 



The difficulty experienced in establishing a cross between 

 our wild and tame birds, shows that they are not as closely 

 related as was once supposed. Did a near kinship subsist, 

 interbreeding could most readily be accomplished. With 

 the Mexican Turkey, matters are otherwise. That a rela- 

 tionship does obtain between the domestic bird and the latter 

 its wild original there can be no question, as specimens 

 of the naturalized species are often met with which are nearly 

 the counterpart of its Mexican progenitor, differing only in 

 the greater development of the fatty appendages of the head 

 and neck, differences which may be accounted for as the 

 effects of the influences to which the birds have been sub- 

 jected by man. No well-authenticated instances of similar 



